The Challenge
The Lowitja Institute is Australia’s national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research. Its work spans many projects, partners, and outputs, and that work is only useful if people can find it. Research material was spread across disconnected locations, which made it hard to manage documents consistently, collaborate across teams, and share the right information with the right people. For a research body, where provenance and controlled access genuinely matter, a fragmented document landscape is a real constraint on the mission.
What Evocate Delivered
Evocate delivered a research portal built on SharePoint and Microsoft 365, scoped and built as a single engagement:
- Discovery: understood how research projects, documents, and outputs actually move through the Institute
- Information architecture: designed a structure around research workflows, not generic defaults
- Research portal: built a SharePoint-based portal with structured document libraries and metadata
- Controlled access: configured access so the right researchers and partners reach the right material
- Training and handover: ran training, UAT, and handover so the team can own the portal going forward
Outcomes
Researchers now work from a single portal rather than scattered drives and inboxes. Research documents are organised, tagged, and searchable, so material can be found and reused instead of recreated. Access is controlled, which supports careful, appropriate handling of sensitive research. The Institute has one structured home for its knowledge that can grow with the work.
Why This Matters
Research and not-for-profit health organisations carry knowledge as their core asset, yet that knowledge is often the least organised thing they own. Lowitja shows Evocate can turn SharePoint into a purpose-built research portal that respects how a research body works and how its information must be governed. For any organisation whose value lives in its documents, the lesson is the same: structure, search, and controlled access should be designed in from the start, not bolted on later.
